The laminar flow in a curved channel is studied numerically to analyse the initial formation, development and interaction phenomena of an array of centrifugally induced longitudinal vortices arranged across the span of the channel. Simulations employing streamwise periodic boundary conditions (temporal model) as well as inlet-outlet conditions (spatial model) are carried out. In the temporal approach the interactions (pairing of vortices and growth of new vortex pairs) of fully developed vortex pairs are time-dependent, whereas in the spatial approach these events are inherently steady and concern vortices not in their fully developed state. The initial spatial development of the vortices is in excellent agreement with results of a linear stability analysis up to fairly large disturbance amplitudes. In the nonlinear regime a good agreement with experimental results has also been found. The receptivity of the flow is very important in a convectively unstable situation such as the present one and different behaviour is found at fixed Reynolds number (equal to 2.43 times the critical value for the onset of Dean vortices): the flow can be either steady or undergo a continuous sequence of merging and splitting events, depending on the inlet conditions. In the latter situation decorrelated patterns of low- and high-speed streaks are produced in streamwise-spanwise planes and they bear several similarities to near-wall coherent structures of turbulent boundary layers.